BLANCMANGE - Wanderlust (Sealed) (LP)

Ten songs composed by Neil Arthur and arranged, co-produced and mixed with Benge (Wrangler/Creep Show) at the latter's Memetune Studios. This is the pair's third album together. Wanderlust is focussed on similar themes but there's a new energy to the approach - wistfulness turning to anger; dislocation morphing into a powerful desire to be somewhere else, and always a sense of someone fighting for forward motion, dreams, family and the joys of life while seeing, as Arthur puts it, `the pretence of a normal world being erased.' This spirit is also in the music, which is vital, percussive, full of analogue machine-noise and chunky basslines.